Man O' War - Valhalla 2020
We are drinking a bottle of Chardonnay Valhalla 2020 from Man O' War from New Zealand.
It’s been almost ten years since I first came across Man O’ War in the WRINT Flaschen podcast. Crazy how time flies. It must actually have been a bit less than that, since we reordered the package in a slightly different selection. But even then, the Dreadnought Syrah was so good that wines from the other end of the world have found their way onto our table again and again. Simply typing Manowar and Valhalla into your favorite search engine doesn’t work too well without further context, at least, not if you weren’t planning on blasting ’80s heavy metal at home. But with a bit more context, it works out. James Cook, who anchored in one of the bays of Waiheke Island near Auckland, New Zealand in the 18th century, gave that bay the name Man O’ War, and that’s why the winery is called that today. The great reds are named after ship classes, while the flagship Chardonnay is called Valhalla. And from there, it’s only a short leap to metal anyway.
Man O’ War was founded in 1993 and now cultivates over 60 hectares of vineyards, has olive trees and beehives, and is also involved in local reforestation projects. The climate in the vineyards is, of course, shaped by the small island and the wind. The Valhalla is blended from the best barrels of various vineyards. The grapes, which grow on limestone and volcanic soils, are hand-harvested, spontaneously fermented, and then matured in large wooden barrels with about a quarter new wood. As is common in New Zealand, bottling is done with screw caps. Compared to here, the wine is also half a year older than you’d expect, since summer and winter are shifted in the Southern Hemisphere. But the longer the wine ages in the bottle, the smaller that difference becomes.
The wine has oak, and in the first moments, really, really a lot of it. The first two or three times you bury your nose in the glass are sacrificed to acclimatization. It really takes a bit before you smell past it. There’s simply a lot of everything. There’s a lot of nut, yellow fruit, and a robust structure already on the nose. The first sip is then surprisingly dynamic, with much less tannin or oak than you might expect from the initial impression. Sure, there’s also wood, there’s also structure in the middle of the tongue, but there’s also a lot of fruit, acidity, some mango, umami, and a salty coolness that builds with every sip. It’s dense, intense, and concentrated, and maybe actually still a bit young. But as always, we brought plenty of time.
The gap between nose and palate widens even more on the second evening. The nose becomes so spicy that there’s almost no room left for other aromas. Even with careful approach, swirling, and time, it’s hard to get past the wall the wine builds up. I still like how the wine drinks, and the enormous spice in the nose nicely emphasizes the salty, iodine impression when tasting, but it’s not really all that fun like this. Into the fridge.
Thankfully, the fruit returns on the third evening. It gets creamier, more yellow, and with sea breeze, smoke, and wood, the wine now finds an inner balance that was completely missing on the second night. Or perhaps it was our palates, you never really know, but when it happens to two people at once, I usually chalk it up to the wine rather than to us. There’s canned mango, pineapple, and nutty grains. The wine is still a lot. It’s not fat or clumsy, the acidity’s got drive, and today I’m really enjoying it again. But it’s just a lot. So I can only recommend bringing plenty of time when you open a bottle at this stage. Thanks to the screw cap, putting it back in the fridge is simple, so you can take your time getting to know the wine. Four, five, or even six days would probably have been no problem. I really like it, maybe precisely because I don’t drink something like this very often.